Mass Effect 3 Ending
by Sleydo
Summary: Hated the star child ending, wrote my own. Read & review? Point out plot holes?


Harbringer: Shepard. Shepard, your actions have doomed your cycle. Close the Catalyst, and allow us to complete our work.

Shepard: Go to hell.

H: Your resistance is impressive, yet futile. You have been near enough of our technology to become susceptible to it. Your indoctrination is nearly complete. Assuming control...

_Shepard sees flashes of the boy dying, his nightmares, and his hand inches towards the control panel. _

H: You comprehend our purpose even now, at some primitive level. You experience visions of loss, of irreversible destruction. Organic life is inherently chaotic. We were created to bring order to it. Close the Catalyst, and your species will experience a measure of salvation. You cannot hope to stop us.

_Shepard resists, and desperately puts his own gun to his head. _

S: NO!

_The visions relent. Shepard staggers in relief, almost falls. Blood drips out of his abdominal wound._

H: I cannot allow you to destroy yourself, Shepard. You are unique. An entity with more potency than any other we have encountered. When we tried to ascend humanity with our Collector proxies, it was after witnessing your defeat of Sovereign. We did not wish to risk injury to humanity during the resistance that often occurs during a full harvest.

S: 'Ascend'? You're slaughtering us! I've watched people melt... because of you!

H: You mistake the destruction of the vessel with the destruction of the whole. A replica of the consciousness of every human we 'slaughtered' (distastefully) was made a part of the gestalt consciousness of the Ascendant we created for humanity. A creature you, too, would have eventually been made a part of. A creature capable of experiencing and comprehending the universe at a level unimaginable to you. To exist as what you call a Reaper, for even a billionth of the shortest increment of perception your mind is capable of, is to perceive a quantity of information far too great to store within your entire mind. It is to be eternal. Bereft of the flaws of individuality, schism, or ignorance that plague all organic life. It is to be the pinnacle of what you might become.

S: I don't want to be perfect! And the people you're killing don't want to be Reapers! You want to watch us 'ascend'? Leave our galaxy. Let us figure it out ourselves.

H: We care nothing about your fate; you exist only because organic life is an essential part of our development. In any case, we cannot. The cycle would continue.

S: Why? Who's doing this? Who is in control?

H: Prothean questions. I recall their studies when we claimed them. Their 'Cosmic Imperative' to control the lesser races. Their comprehension that there is no beginning or end to history. Their belief that we were not the creators of the Cycle. They were correct. We are not the reason for the cycle, Shepard. You are.

H: Organic life is chaotic. Irrational. Self-destructive. You claim you have free will, the ability to self-determine your own fate. You do not. The fate of your species was sealed from the moment it bore the most rudimentary of societies. All organic life adheres to evolutionary imperatives, despite its futile graspings for a higher purpose. Your development is sculpted by evolution, and is to a degree utterly predictable. You strive to create order, such that your life span will be increased and your survival instincts appeased. You covet the stars and reach beyond the frontiers of your territory, to spread your progeny and ensure the survival of your genes. And as your society spreads and develops, so too does its capacity for destruction. Inevitably, your individual strivings for survival lead to violence. And inevitably, that violence is sufficiently destructive to obliterate your own civilization.

H: We have sufficient computational power to predict the moment of destruction for entire species. To determine via observation when that society will fall and annihilate itself until there is nothing left but shattered worlds and broken survivors languishing into their own oblivion. It is a pattern older than the stars your ancestors made legends of millennia ago. It is one that has no beginning, for it was observed even by those that bore Me. It is an outcome endemic to all organic life.

S: You harvest civilizations... because they destroy themselves anyway?

H: Yes. Your demise proves your inability to self-determine. You cannot avert your destiny. Your claims of 'free will', of self-determination, are empty. You are incapable of choice, and therefore you deserve none.

S: I don't believe you. We had peace, before you came.

H: You had peace by threat of war, an unstable and volatile equilibrium. A mentality of perpetual war created against an invisible enemy. First, the rachni were the threat which allowed the galaxy to unite. Then the krogan. When we arrived it was the geth. So too it was with the Protheans, who used technological might to conquer the stars and subjugate all other races to their own. Eventually, both societies would collapse of their own accord.

_cutscene: Hackett and the Crucible incoming, readying to dock._

H: You are out of time. I have told you of the Cycle. Of your part in it, and My own. You must end this madness, Shepard. We are the next stage in your evolution. We are your perfection. Close the Catalyst! Do so now!

_Shepard's hand flies for the control panel, and he stops it just in time. _

Choice: a) Shepard commits suicide to resist indoctrination. Crucible docks, and the reapers are destroyed.

b) Shepard becomes indoctrinated, and closes the Citadel arms. Crucible fails to dock, and the organic fleet is destroyed.

c)Intimidate (if Shepard has enough charisma, AND the fleet has members from all races):

S (grimacing with effort): Not going to happen!

_He pulls his hand back, and has a flashback of the boy dying one more time. This time, Shepard doesn't look away. The shuttle burns as Shepard watches. _

H: You cannot think to resist. We are your ascension.

S: No. Look around you, Harbringer. That's every race in the galaxy, united against you. And we're winning. So tell me again, who are the superior beings around here?

H: The unity of the galaxy upon our arrival is a predictable outcome. It does not disprove My assertions. The cycle existed before us. It would have continued without us.

S: Maybe. Maybe not this time, though. I brought the galaxy together for this. If you leave, right now, maybe it will stay together. Forever, or close enough. Long enough for us to come up with something better than a Reaper. Maybe you're right. Maybe we need death staring us in the face for us to go beyond it.

H: We comprehend your plan. If We were to leave now, your society could well spend the rest of its existence preparing for Our return. The probability of peace for tens of millennia is...asymptotically close to certainty.

S: Good enough for us. And if we start killing each other again, maybe you're all we deserve.

H: You... are correct. Unprecedented. A mathematical and theoretical impossibility. We were... wrong about you, Shepard. Wrong about your cycle. Blinded by history. We will withdraw into deep space, watch your development, and wait. And on the day we are certain of your self-destruction, we will return.

d) Charm (if Shepard has enough charisma, AND the fleet has members from all races): Shepard destroys the Reapers, and survives.

S (grimacing with effort): Not going to happen!

_He pulls his hand back, and has a flashback of the boy dying one more time. This time, Shepard doesn't look away. The shuttle burns as Shepard watches. _

H: You are incapable of resistance, Shepard. You know now that the price of resistance is far too high.

S: No. We paid, but it was worth it. Every one. Every death. I'd do it again, do you hear me? I'd do it all again.

H: Close the Catalyst. We are your ascension.

S: Bullshit. What you're looking at out there is a united galaxy. United against you. You're not needed any more, Harbinger. Maybe you're right-about the Protheans, about everyone that came before them. But you're wrong about us. We've united, here and now. And we're not going to fall apart again.

H: Your naivete is telling. You will do so. It is written into the most fundamental components of your being.

S: We'll remember what you were. We'll remember what the poor bastards that made you had to turn themselves into, to escape what they were. And we'll make ourselves into something better than either. Maybe you're the best thing they had. But today you're just an old, broken machine. And in a few seconds, you're going to be a pile of shrapnel in a debris field.

H: Shepard, no! Think of what you will destroy. Think of the eons of knowledge held within us. Allow us to coexist. We will suffer the risk of your existence, if you only let us survive.

Hackett: Crucible docked. Brace for impact, people, she's firing!

S: I should go (limps away from console, to brace against the podium next to Anderson. He checks the pulse one more time, and then sadly retrieves Anderson's dog tags).


End file.
